Baldness, especially male pattern baldness (androgenetic alopecia), although not a disabling or life-threatening condition, is of great importance to those affected by it. The loss of hair is a psychological trauma for many men. For hundreds of years, people have sought cures for baldness, but only recently with the development of minoxidil and retinoic acid, have treatments of some effectiveness emerged.
The continued development of effective treatments for baldness has led to the need for a rapid and efficient means of screening the effect of prospective anti-baldness medications. At present, such drugs must be tested by the manual method of counting hairs in order to determine hair growth, which requires large numbers of patients for statistical significance. This is very time consuming as well as subject to error. Accordingly, there is a need for a faster and more efficient way of assessing hair growth and determining the effect of a medication or drug on hair growth, particularly for treatment of androgenetic alopecia.